Messi's Buyout Clause & New Salary

If you're a professional soccer team who wants to buy Lionel Messi from Barcelona, you'll have to come up with $450 million to do so. Barcelona have increased the buyout price for their star soccer player, to protect what is their key asset.

I'm sure Barcelona hope to keep Messi for his entire soccer career, but you never know, their might be a team that comes along and says we'll give you a billion dollars for Messi. That would be a lot of money tough to pass up.

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Messi is an asset that Barcelona doesn't really want to sell, so they're sending a message to all those clubs, Manchester City and Real Madrid being the two main ones, who could potentially try to purchase Messi at some point in the future. And if they hope or want to, the price for Lionel Messi has doubled.

Last year, the buyout price was $215 million, but with the signings of Kaka and Cristiano and Barcelona's own purchase of Ibrahimovic, their hefty transfer fees, it made sense to show what they think their little genius Lionel Messi is worth to the club.

Along with raising the buyout clause, Barcelona have also increased Messi's salary, so he's the highest paid player on the team. Since Barca signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Inter Milan, they needed to give Messi a raise, otherwise Ibrahimovic would have been the highest paid player. Some say Messi has a clause in his contract stated that he's always the highest paid player on the team. That's a nice stipulation to have in a contract. And, one deserved by Messi. Messi is now said to earn $13.5 million per season playing for Barcelona.

Over at Real Madrid, they've realized that their new asset, Cristiano Ronaldo, needs to be insured. Actually, they just want to insure his legs for the tune of $150 million. Makes sense though, when you've paid that much money for a player. But how does it work exactly, what if he gets injured walking to the soccer field, does that still count or does he have to be playing in a game for Real Madrid?

When you get down to it though, as Messi just keeps scoring goal after goal after goal and making it looks so easy all the while, there's really not a price you can put on his potential transfer to another team. Really, it's becoming clearer and clear that Messi is the best player to ever play the game of soccer. Yes, he still needs to win the World Cup, but he certainly came close in 2014 versus Germany.

A perfect pricture was captured of Messi with the backdrop of an advertising board on the side of the field with the words Priceless. It was an ad for Mastercard, but pretty much sums up Messi: "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard." There's just enough money to buy Messi...he's now priceless.

How does Lionel Messi's yearly salary compare to some of the other world soccer stars and professional athletes?

Top Earners: All Sports

This list from Forbes includes money from salaries, bonuses, prize money, endorsements and licensing income. For one thing, looks like Tiger is making more than double than Kobe, Michael and Raikkonen, not bad for a golfer.

Beckham of course has now retired from professional soccer, so it's safe to assume that Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are fighting for the number one place in terms of salary. Ronaldinho is still playing in Mexico and some say he could come to the MLS, but he's not earning nearly as much as he did during his days with Barcelona and AC Milan.